JOHANNESBURG — Knocked off his board by an attacking shark, three-time world champion Mick Fanning punched the creature before escaping unharmed during the televised finals of a world surfing competition in South Africa on Sunday.

The Australian surfer was struck by the shark from behind and knocked into the water as he sat on his board waiting his turn during the JBay Open in Jeffrey’s Bay in the Eastern Cape Province.

AMES, Iowa — Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump criticized Sen. John McCain’s military record at a conservative forum Saturday, saying the party’s 2008 nominee and former prisoner of war was a “war hero because he was captured. I like people who weren’t captured.”

NEW YORK (AP) — The Supreme Court’s ruling last month legalizing same-sex marriage nationwide has left Americans sharply divided, according to an Associated Press-GfK poll that suggests support for gay unions may be down slightly from earlier this year.

The poll also found a near-even split over whether local officials with religious objections should be required to issue marriage licenses to same-sex couples, with 47 percent saying that should be the case and 49 percent say they should be exempt.

LOS ANGELES — A fast-moving wildfire that swept across a packed California interstate, sending people running for their lives, was burning more calmly Saturday as rain fell and temperatures dropped.

The fire had burned over Interstate 15 on Friday in Cajon Pass, a mountainous area 55 miles northeast of Los Angeles. It destroyed 20 vehicles on the freeway linking Southern California and Las Vegas before burning three homes and 44 more vehicles in the nearby community of Baldy Mesa.

MINNEAPOLIS — Researchers believe they found the grave of a man who could be considered the first black male slave freed by Abraham Lincoln, tracking his final resting place to the cemetery of a former Minnesota psychiatric hospital.

NEW YORK — The widow of Eric Garner and hundreds of protesters rallied outside a courthouse Saturday to call on federal prosecutors to indict the white police officer who put the black New York City man in a fatal chokehold a year ago.

“You all keep me empowered to speak,” Garner’s widow, Esaw Garner, told the demonstrators at the federal courthouse in Brooklyn.

“I will not stop loving him,” she added. “I will never stop fighting for him.”

WASHINGTON — The talks themselves were a groundbreaking and risky proposition when U.S. and Iranian officials met secretly in the sleepy Arab kingdom of Oman, archenemies feinting for a diplomatic opening. The opposing sides had barely spoken to one another in three-plus decades.

But after a torturous 2 1/2-year effort full of false starts, backward steps and missed deadlines, world powers and Iran transformed those early overtures into a nuclear accord that may reshape the security landscape of the Mideast for a generation to come.

RIYADH, Saudi Arabia — Saudi Arabia announced Saturday it has broken up planned Islamic State attacks in the kingdom and arrested more than 400 suspects in an anti-terrorism sweep, a day after a powerful blast in neighboring Iraq killed more than 100 people in one of the country’s deadliest single attacks since U.S. troops pulled out in 2011.

WASHINGTON — The deadly shootings at military sites in Tennessee illustrate the threat that FBI officials have warned about: violence directed against a vulnerable government target by a lone gunman with apparent terrorist aspirations.

The FBI has not detailed a motive, but Thursday’s attacks that killed four Marines and one sailor are under investigation as a potential act of terrorism, with authorities combing through the gunman’s past to look for travel, contacts and online writings.